Defence and prosecution lawyers are to blame for more than a third of ‘ineffective’ trials in the Crown court, according to data published by the Ministry of Justice.

The Judicial and Court Statistics 2010 show that, of the 977,000 cases committed to the Crown court last year, 14% did not go ahead on the trial date and were recorded as ineffective.

Court administrative problems were the biggest cause of ineffective trials (23% of cases), followed by absent defendants (22%) or prosecution witnesses (20%).

However, in 17% of cases, trials were recorded as unable to proceed because the defence was ‘not ready’, while a further 17% were stalled because of the same problem with the prosecution.

Similar problems pertain in the magistrates’ courts, where 18% of the 180,000 trials commenced in 2010 were recorded as ineffective.

Of these, 15% were due to lack of readiness on the part of the defence, and 11% on the part of the prosecution.

Ian Kelcey, chair of the Law Society’s criminal law committee, suggested that more trials may be stalled as a result of prosecution failures than the figures suggest.

A CPS spokesperson said: ‘The report makes clear that there are a number of reasons why trials are ineffective due to the court, defence and prosecution and the fact that the prosecution is not ready is not the main reason for ineffective trials.

'In both magistrates’ courts and Crown courts, in those cases where the prosecution was not ready to proceed, this could have been for many reasons, including for example, late service of documentation and evidence by those involved in the criminal justice system and previous cases over-running so that prosecution advocates were engaged in other courts.

'The CPS is committed to reducing bureaucracy and improving its effectiveness in court, and we are already seeing some improvement, with a reduction in the number of ineffective trials due to the prosecution not being ready.’